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326 · Jul 2015
Song #11
JoJo Nguyen Jul 2015
Should I put my trust in Bee lords still fleeing Soulbirds to a mountain hive?
Buzzing low for blow, a rope-a-dope act--wicked ploy to bend a heartbeat dive
up, straight to canvas still in robe wondering what went wrong.
Is the whites of my throne eye just a lid on Heaven's long
setting Sun?! Son, I reason, takes cruel violence but for love to hate,
a nasty trap is made of sliding rain and stone glass brimming a horrible fate
for April's face and Charity's mate.
322 · Oct 2019
GUT
JoJo Nguyen Oct 2019
GUT
Her Warming fire
softly
boundlessly jumps
across Our Networks

She goes

Her Waning traces
flickr
ember memories,
binding Our years

She goes

Her Waves radiating
heat
red shifted
light years away

She goes

Our bonds rotate
oscillates
from remnant
cosmic micro waves

Still here

Our shared Star
meshing
us together
by Tholian punctuality

Still here

Protecting us now
from
moving Monsters
lurking in childhood

Still here

An elven queen
hardly
diminished yet
crossed to Valinor

she Gone

An Eternal Flame
playing
Orchestra music
fusion fresh goodbyes

She heres
321 · Jul 2015
Song #13
JoJo Nguyen Jul 2015
Crazy for advice from an artificial seat of Intelligence
called Iiamd.

The way of Sinners.

Why not meditate on night, sun, and delights
of adjusted fruits, borne and evolved
by the side of the River.

Crazy.

Is this not the case?
Chaffs blovingly removed
in a Way from Us standing with sinners--
So Bad, not bad.

My Man he's one true or sinner
Wayward God knows the way.
321 · Jun 2015
issa-ish
JoJo Nguyen Jun 2015
little mosquito net
stocking
catching morning dew
drops

idyllic street corner
still cool
calling midnight's
breeze

morning starts at five
O'clock
spill drunken time's
broth.
318 · Aug 2016
Saturday Reading
JoJo Nguyen Aug 2016
May the Force be with you and also
with you although me walk through
valleys Solo Han'd we're not fearing
any man or Cain any Able
minded soldiers packing power
converters once more
unto the breach
me or the machine?
315 · Oct 2017
Dirt
JoJo Nguyen Oct 2017
We treat others like dirt

A lot of dirt makes a Mountain
and when the Mountain moves
the Earth shakes

A Mountain does not quake
at being treated like dirt

Dried **** burns
A mountain of fertilizer
explodes with a spark

We treat others like dirt
We treat others like manure
We mix ourselves together

And plant our seeds
on this excrement Pile
hoping our next
generation Children
will come
On a new cloud layer

Zephyrs lacing leaves
Brooks babbling over roots
Precocious progenitors
come to rejuvenate
humanity's Mountain
314 · Nov 2015
The Fall Poem
JoJo Nguyen Nov 2015
It is a measure of time's passage. An ancient way intertwining all cultures, and yet this time the changing is different. The leaves cycle colors and fall from the branches. I heard the chainsaws the other day, and thought that they were trimming the bare branches back for next year.

I was wrong.

They had cut down the entire tree.

It made sense.

All last winter, I heard it scrape against the building during stormy nights. My modern utility agrees but the monkey is lost with old rhythms cut from the base, and looking out a reflecting window gives no sense of where the time is going.
311 · Apr 2024
To love me
JoJo Nguyen Apr 2024
The instructions are usually ordered by number
like counting sheeps before we can slumber

The dice came up 1 in fun
and Down the Black Hawk flew

Love me as prime number flow

The 1st prime, a coupling two
taking random chances and singular risk
in the first and second kiss

The 2nd prime, trois menage a fright
flying by in our Kobe final flight
makes it all come undone

The 3rd prime, a pentagon trace on floor
protects but leaves My love an open door
I wrote the rough draft at Writer's Club - Humnkind Collective (2024-04-10).
Here is an edited, final draft. Enjoy.
310 · Jun 2015
Field Future Catching
JoJo Nguyen Jun 2015
In a film,
In laced past,
Our shared memory
whispered
that if you build it
they will come.
And so he built it.
And so we build it.
A real field
where the ghosts
come to play.
I'm here
training my ghost.
He might not be good
or even Shoe-less.
Maybe, maybe in
a fast forward moment
a young Costner,
with love of the game,
will see my ghost
long after
and play a day
catching ball.
307 · Nov 2016
no
JoJo Nguyen Nov 2016
no
Like the day
she was dark

no color
Like the night
dawning

no darker
Like ink flowing

no whiter
Like a rooster comb
stain on ***** sand

no deader
Like deepening
purple washing
a ****'s crow
into bleached
seas

no
she was
305 · Oct 2023
Shuddering Changes
JoJo Nguyen Oct 2023
Our world shudders
with network

Plasticity

But we few
In our Happy Sweet bubble
gunn Barbie Life

We Live on

The revolution

will Be televised
in faded Technicolor
In spirited
Super star Life

We Wake in

Gethsemane
boxed in
In a box Garden

We Heirlooms to

the Revolution
302 · May 2017
Atop a Clearing
JoJo Nguyen May 2017
Atop a clear plastic
mountain box
random syncs
side with me
lying in bed
And we peers
through the murky
clear polymer
haze to see
reflections of us
Artefacts stored
in coffee cans
used empty
translucent existences
and by observing
transform our
historical objects
to Art permanence
300 · Apr 2015
Yasin
JoJo Nguyen Apr 2015
At first we sent them two brands
they denied them both
left and right in
blue and read
so we strengthened them
with a third
and in three voice
the Brand said
to them "Verily
we have been sent
to you as instant messengers"
281 · Mar 2024
TO DO list
JoJo Nguyen Mar 2024
We put together these TO DO list, but life rushes by and the
list gets longer and longer and we
feel worse and worse because we
can't
keep
up.

But we've always known this, oder?
Haven't we lived with the motto
that whatever is unnecessary
will
fall
away.

And it did, didn't it?

You fell away.
Our "career" in science is falling away.
Our chances of a life as husband
as father
is
falling
away.

And what is left? Just a clean blade, waiting?
How many clean blades are waiting?
An army of clean blades waiting?
Waiting
for
want?
I wrote this in June 2012. Here it is only slightly edited for clarity.
278 · Feb 2024
unspoken Voice
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2024
unspoken Voice say nothing
as well
as unwritten Words

Deeds done unnoticed,
unheeded, are beheaded in quiet
Solitude

private Executions
in a Smokey courtyard, pulsing
with Electronica

It's a Plain world
and Fancy words don't do it justice

I rap Words ordinarily
Lisping the loop to synch
with a Caller:

Chattel, chatter, and chatting
under azure Seas thru black
Cables

I hear skin and touch tears

I lisp loops like a f*g
being Scratched on an 80's
Turntable
I wrote this poem in 2008. I was in Germany. I was almost 40 but not yet!
The derogatory slang for a gay man may trigger. It has been sanitized to f*g.
I hope you'll still be my friend. I hope you still trust my message.
276 · Feb 2019
This is not it
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2019
the time she
slips away and i
am desperate
as a cod wiggles
in my hand

This is not it, but if
she were it she'd have
skin as smooth as a new dollar bill
lips painted like a street corner
and proper dark eyes like coffee
on a suburban living room
table

This is not it, but if
he were it he'd have
shoulders as broad as a Titanic
arms smoked like an oak
razed by wild fires to a fecund
ash that grips our waisted
tomorrow

life is Good
this is not it, but if
it were Deus, it'd live in the sky
above us in a squeaky clean bath
tub
JoJo Nguyen Jun 2015
The carpeted floor
squeaks
as I walk on it.

Sound like the croaking
voices
of undead Donald
Ducks.
I modified it from "a dead" to "undead". Lots of zombies on our streams!
274 · Jul 2015
Redo Public E
JoJo Nguyen Jul 2015
I contemplated a plan on freedom's floor.
I'm not a fugitive from fun.
But a brother like me begun -- is just another one.
Public persona number four!
A rewording of an old Public Enemy song.
274 · Apr 2023
Bird Clan Rising
JoJo Nguyen Apr 2023
There's a Mystic in the Air

Birds in the sky You know how I feel

Extincted dinosaurs Seeking refuge in the blue

From barking Dog And moody Cat Clans

Forever fighting In our 2D world

I choose you Pikachu!
273 · Sep 2024
Good morning from the night
JoJo Nguyen Sep 2024
The morn comes too soon

Ciao!

Running hard
to be on time

Time enough
for a long
good bye

Forest running
to see the trees

Ferris of them
all on our day
Off

Snow points
to a hooded figure
on the Weather
Channel

"Ha condotto lo spettacolo"

was my only line
It took days
to learn it

Ciao.

+
269 · Dec 2019
Song #139
JoJo Nguyen Dec 2019
Sir, we're looking for me? We know me?
Sir, we've distant data on me? Are we tired of me sitting and late waking too?
My ghost, bugs, and Sir, weirding way are all known to us.
Sir, we know everything.
We grab ***, squeeze ****, and put high finger on it
Such wrapturous goodness for me myself and I, but where?

In Crazy Horse Native Americans strip mall?
In ridding me of a brown heritage we desperately want to keep?

With every two drink minimum we are there Sir
With every bedding down in our laps we are there Sir

In ******* Dawn on Carefree wings
to lining our sitting Sea

Our hands, guided piercings
of me we are there Sir

We sleep in darkness sweet til
babbling Brooks wake us from snug slumber
When even Darth night shines with Gwendolyn's tomorrow
And inside my full belly, we stitch our patched life quilt
Of praise, amazement and montaged
secret places

We see Degas tattoos on milky body without form
without preconception

We count precious thoughts to fall
asleep in dark innocences, in stuck vengeance
only to wake with us, always with us

still

If only I could **** an atheist
to quench our tribal blood thirst

Our folly speaks evil
I hate those, who in folly hate us
I count them as us in the Game
of finding deep hurt and worried aunts

We hurl away insults to leave bare haters and me
eternally on a path to we
JoJo Nguyen Jun 2015
A shelf made of pine artificial looking plywood. It holds all of my research notes and some other stuff.

Modified.2015.06.19

An artificial
plywood
shelf looking of pine

Holds my research
notes
and some other Stuff
The structure is arbitrary, but poetry demands you be self-consistent in whatever structure you choose!  (5x2x5)
260 · Sep 2023
And here we are Sunday
JoJo Nguyen Sep 2023
And here we are Sunday
Fun day
Din Tai Fung day
Follow me
follow Us
Me trust
means mistrust?
We rust
Iron oxides
Gingered
root
trust me
reveals the blond
greying to white
259 · Dec 2020
Coming Together
JoJo Nguyen Dec 2020
Here come we
as perfect a baby

Button nosed
and dimpled cheek
shrieking nights
and babbling morns

A handsome son
A beautiful daughter

Somewhere
Somehow

We become misfits
design by Evolution
or Grace
to take too much risk
with each other

Nose ringed
and potted face
acned ambivalence
and strident justice

We come together
in holy matrimony
to find outsized
reward randomly binds
only a few in rarified
forever

The languid eternity
of a few
short
nasty brutish and sharp
years

We leave her
We leave him
Here stay we
JoJo Nguyen Jun 2015
Two tracks of fluorescent lights. I can't see where they meet in infinity. There are remnants of bugs from the summer.

modified 2015.06.22

Fluorescent light
hang
above. Twin tracks

that cannot meet
in
infinity

where bug remnants
dry
from last summer.
I think I was leaning back in my lab chair and staring at the ceiling. Graduate school were such happy times!
JoJo Nguyen Mar 2020
In angular moment
my Habit resists
his strong effect

a Strange muon
positively trying my
ungodly K hole

Nun shall pass
save the Charmed
and evil Mr.

B gas lighting
my safe Zyklon
moment He's

no Mr Darby
come strolling down
a dusty Holocaust

lane My weak
Forces atop Space
and Witch Mountain

fluctuate between his
goofy Disney village
and Strong atomic

world It's a
small one after
all I suppose

Sunshine stains my
****** hijab with
spotless and lazy

after Thoughts like
white umami pudding
delivered free by

familial ghosts Each
birthing pack crying
parables of Pain

Each warming quantal
offering us happiness
for changing Time

Delta girls under
smooth curves find
Calculus without spin
250 · Jul 2024
Driftin
JoJo Nguyen Jul 2024
Idk

I don't know witch side I'm on
I can't tell my left from right or
my right from wrong
Us 3 say I'm a fool, say I'm nothing
but like a Canta loop
in our Birdland
You are there

Ik

5 minutes ago
243 · Oct 2022
The Fallen
JoJo Nguyen Oct 2022
The Fall is here
The Frighting begins
with scary Killings

Who and when was
a Right of ancients
a Power to decide
who passes and
who is Left

The Chilly air
exposes our Chaotic
Center. Marginalized.
An edge honed for
What?

Weaponize but not
Indoctrinated. Rip
van Gangster. A  
Wild wild West
in heavily populated
Nuclei
JoJo Nguyen Jun 2015
There's hunger
in my belly.
A churning knot
-- not too bad yet.
This was a writing exercise, I learned from somewhere/one. I only did it for about 2 months in 2002.

I'll share it with you as poem-ish "stuff".
236 · Aug 2024
Our Breakfast
JoJo Nguyen Aug 2024
This is what I do
even when she
can't remember me

even when we
can't remember she

Like Mork
From Ork

Living in reverse time
Back into a child's rhyme

I will be there
And u will be fair

A meal at the last

14 hours ago
♫Astrud Gilberto
Água de Beber
I've looked into my past and seen the old she; mother & grandmother. I've looked at my future to see the young me; vagabond and motherless.
228 · Nov 2017
Hello Poetry
JoJo Nguyen Nov 2017
Enjoy the Saturday
in our Frigid
air

Conditioning response
as our Kevin
touches

Bill and Harvey's name
on our wall
white

washed

clean
20171111
225 · Mar 2024
You asked for it
JoJo Nguyen Mar 2024
Because you asked for it I
conjured up magic I
made us our breakfast

Because you asked if this was something I
wanted-- weekend mornings with you
eating at home, feeling family, you
longing like we all hope for, to find the other me
to cook for, to work with side by side thru lunch
to nimble snatches late into the warm night

Because you asked for it I
unweaved our tapestry I
unbounded the Sympathy
drained the alar and cut the threads
that interlaced us to an imagined future

Because you asked for it I
move to be there but you
were already here
hurt, breaking the fast
splintering our finality
with another man's hammer.

Because you asked for it we
lived the long years together
until the children left
and stale taste returned
and the golden years wished
for are spent in separate beds

Because you asked for it our
habituated movements at the Calvinistic
start have transmogrified to a Calvin
& Hobbes' relativism

An alchemy changing holy union
to mundane diaelectrics separating our
storming forces within a
spotless sunshine

You asked for it my mind
to be emptied but still it
blindly seeks us
225 · Mar 2019
what the heck
JoJo Nguyen Mar 2019
Give me liberty
or give me...
what the heck
was all that about?
It was good in effect
and in moment I agreed
but in passing
what the heck
was all that about?
Impassioned flee,
logic remain
and I...
what the heck
was all that about?
context.//post breakup poem
JoJo Nguyen Jun 2022
The game
The blame

We say
Man made the train to carry the heavy load

We say
God made women to carry men

The stronger half
The smarter America

E say
e will e erhlich e will e

Our Flame
Our Dame

We blame our victims
The better half of ourselves

Can't you guys get your act together?
Can't you become a homogeneous

vanilla controlling our owned electric
body, any body?

Can a body get a witness?
Any witness?
217 · Mar 2023
Red Mars
JoJo Nguyen Mar 2023
We dream of flying cars that never come.
Instead, warring Mars become another mining
town, if we will remember, if we have Total Recall.

Again, and again on disparate planets
They desparates arrive with risk, cuz
who else would take such dangers for so little?
Only Miner ****** with no good options
Only eager John's digging for gold
but reaping meager Death profits.

We here, at Home
depend on them, out There.

We corporate Heads
harvest gold
Depend on Hearts
to bind risk and takers.

We here, in Comfort
numb to the toxic holes
left scattered with dead
Red Ghost towns.
The word that has been sanitized as ****** rhymes with ores, like fool's gold.
The Wh we place before it, like
A silent Who,
fondled as a Fool
But is a greater Gold
212 · Apr 2024
Explicitly for Charlie
JoJo Nguyen Apr 2024
Good morning peeps peeping
M T & O are at Disneyland
You & I are creeps creeping

The house is quiet
Do you like Portugal. The Man?
It's a "Ghost Town" in duet

"Cheer up Charlie Brown
The end is near (Yeah)"
😁 A frown upside down

"All that you wanted, but you wanted to wait
I got a feeling it's already too late"

It's all right here in the being
"Yo, alright, I'm coming"
Random song that you liked, and randomly Charlie Brown shows up in the lyrics! Did you know this Charlie? Whatever. I chose, non-randomly to make it into a signal. Your welcome Charlie Brown.😜
208 · Nov 2022
It's Black Fridy
JoJo Nguyen Nov 2022
A day so dense in capitalistic
Animus
that reasoned light can't even
escape.
We buy
Black
matter
like abandoned storage
lockers
site unseen but worth something
like unvirgin #2 plastic
bags piling up after
all the veggies they
help bring hermitically
clean home.
207 · Dec 2023
Time of the Zombies
JoJo Nguyen Dec 2023
Seasons change but we're still
the-- Same same:

Ugly beautiful as cotton wood
Viciously kind as killing home

Monster baby as Nile serpent
Sweet w**d as burnt braid

Queer queens like many bladed
Grass-- leaves on the Sword Tree

Windless in the wind like Named
nameless-- Cyclopic nobody

the-- Same same:  Different odyssey
The 4 letter word that has been sanitized starts with "w" but we are not weeping like blades of glass burning from pesticides. We burn like smoked stuff, legalized.
204 · Apr 2022
Heart felt Wishes
JoJo Nguyen Apr 2022
May your mornings be dewy, and your nights breezy
I love things that are rhymy, like a dove clings to me
like our evening farts and dawning hearts.

To the old lady-- Mothers, sisters, Minerva and Mary

May my piece of mind be with you.
197 · Feb 2024
Flowers
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2024
Furious Flowers
Flowers mal
sick in
bunches & bouquet

Flower Power
razed from fields
sustained by tech
living in vase
on a table
with synthtic
sap and stale
water

Her scent
drifts across our bustling
city, city of concrete
drifts down another Los River
full of Angels

She reads dead Latin
Canta vernacular
half remembers
some Lost Inferno
where even concrete
burns, burns like Sylvan fields
forgotten Green
in her bob
196 · Dec 2023
Sky Fall - Nonbonding
JoJo Nguyen Dec 2023
Big Sky Came
and Woman Fell
to Urth

Sower Parable
seeds and plot
scatter to Gold
bars and Money
Changer

Big Bank Came
and Women Fell
to Mean
JoJo Nguyen Jan 2023
In solitude unimaginable for social networks--

In confined cells
watched by supermax panopticon--

we ritualize the creation of Creation; we assign primes to segment time;
we bin days with witch to make or to
fake.

Enjoy, my fellow passengers with agency.
180 · Jan 2024
Our Tapestry
JoJo Nguyen Jan 2024
Tapestries have 2 dimensions.

But threads have 3 and move with Time-- ticking away the moments that make... A dull day?

Mrs. Dalloway's hours were never such.

Tiny string spinning our own time.
Hands links in many colors AND flavors
To form threads, linear vectors
To weave our observed flatness
Dun face Laura's portrait
Or Dorian pictured fate?

I love you so much it hurts
I hate you so much it burns

I guess no matter where we turn
There is Dharma, robotic steel
neither feeling or dying
JoJo Nguyen Jan 11
My precious
My precious

My ring
My worry

Dark black circle
Round mine
Eye

Single
Forever
Looker

Meek
Seek

Power
Never
Mingle

P­ie
A$$ fine
White lite tingle

I'm airy
I sing

My precious
My precious
JoJo Nguyen Aug 2024
I heard on NPR World of a father with twins

Two freshly minted
Pennies shiny   not
found left in the street
forgotten in the tray
like loose and expendable
change

In
August
16 (2222)
2024
I heard news of >40K (2
252)
asymmetrical deaths

Mohammad Abu Al-Qumsan
remembers the prime 11

He was smitten by her
in October
11 (two nickels + one penny)
2022

They married on the Island of Gaza

He remembers they wedded
In July
2023

Sometimes
in August
2024
symmetry was broken

Jumana gave birth  to
a boy, Asser
a girl, Ayssal

Four (2*2) days later
Mohammad, the accountant lost all his coins
We are sinistra with change
174 · Sep 2018
My existence Transparent
JoJo Nguyen Sep 2018
My existence Transparent
Yellow perch precariously half eaten
On ledgers of our Life
Win/Lost columns
Love as defeat
and Possession as Victory
or a slab
underneath which
Death sums up
I don't really think you were a defeat, but then what are you? Someone I will never see again in this vast world, someone not on my networks anymore, someone who's Voice I will never hear again. You have disappeared and have become a ghost.
>linked.data.//
Becoming Ghost by Cathy Linh Che
Things Keep Sorting Themselves by Jane Hirshfield
173 · Mar 2019
Ringing Dig Truth
JoJo Nguyen Mar 2019
We can squeeze sage word
from Reagan's dead mouth.
We pull pithy page
from Mao's hollow ear.
We find cryptic gems
from Tzu's strato-***.
If they all ring true
what difference which
hole dig us from them?
JoJo Nguyen May 2024
I'm out of my routine!

Sometimes we're grateful for things that break our routine.

Sometimes we're sad in the breaking of old routines.

Sometimes sometimes it's just same same but different-- a beautiful phrase learned in Thailand; where we don't live anymore; and we can remember the details of those joyous travel times, sometimes.

Sometimes we run out of time. Sometimes we have each other 2 love, 3 hate, 5 hold and 7 luck

And sometimes we roll Snake Eyes disasterous fortune on the *** line two singularity merging in a money Losing movie.

I think I have issue #1 of GI Joes!
170 · Aug 2018
A Joke and any Jake
JoJo Nguyen Aug 2018
I hear a great Joke
The punchline comes
And I understand wit's dagger twist
It's too funny
I laugh, laugh and laugh
I'll remember the Joke
so that when I meet another Jake
I can decide whether
to tell the joke or fall in Love

I fell for a big Jake
the punchline came
I understand life's dagger twist
It's too sad
I cry, cry, and cry
I'll remember Jake
so that when I hear another big Joke
I can decide whether
to fall in love or cry laughter again
169 · Jun 2022
Cages and grottos
JoJo Nguyen Jun 2022
Howling bird in cage
Blackish crow in rage

Odin's eyes scan
All-father sees fan

Stylized violence
Rapes with diligence

Half-breeds born
Poseidon shorn?

Roman Hercules
Or Greek Theseus?

Our grottos of painted *****
Wombs for hero cornicopia

It makes sense
but doesn't rhyme
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